myBad Studios has launched the alpha phase of its social system which means you are now able to send friend requests to other members.

The MBS Social system is slightly different from your normal social system so I thought it wise to explain to you how this system works.

First and foremost and by far the single most important thing to know about this system is that its purpose is to connect this site’s members who know each other so that future features of this site can operate or function correctly. For example… knowing who to notify that their friends are in a skirmish when they start to play the same game. The purpose of this system is to make interactions across the site and inside future games enjoyable for members not to become an ad driven website

To that end the MBS Social system has a few quirks that you may not be familiar with if you have been a long time user of other social media sites…

How is MBS Social different from other social media sites?

After you have sent someone a friend request you will not be able to send follow up or reminder requests. You tell someone you want to be their friend and then it is up to them to decide yes or no. Your request will remain active on their friends page indefinitely so there is no need to send the request again

While a person is contemplating your request and/or after they have declined your request, you have no means of contacting them again. This means that your ability to friend them is disabled, your ability to withdraw your friend request doesn’t exist… you can’t even see who you’ve sent friend requests to. Currently you can see if your request is pending or declined by visiting their profile page and seeing if the message “Friend Request Pending” is still being displayed. This will be removed in a future update.

The MBS Social system works on a one strike system. This means that if you decline a friend request (or your request is rejected) neither you nor the other party will be able to view one another’s friends page or profile pages or have any means of making contact with one another.

The person who declined (or later cancelled) your friend request will see your profile in their black list and can choose to remove you from their black list if they so choose. Doing so will send that person a friend request and it will be up to that person to decide whether or not to accept it or decline, once again making contact between both parties impossible

In a future update the MBS Social system will also impose a restriction on the maximum number of pending friend requests you may have active (Currently I am looking at 20). This means that if you have sent friend requests to 20 people and they have not accepted your request then you will not be able to send out any more requests until someone either adds you to their blacklist or accepts your invite. The hope is that this will prevent spam accounts from trying to sell you knock off handbags and other nonsense since they will only be able to contact 20 people and no more. Since they have no means of seeing who they sent requests to and there is no option to withdraw a request this means they will only ever be able to bother a maximum of 20 people on the entire site. Hopefully this limitation will make them see the MBS Social platform as a waste of time for their spamming efforts

I am considering also adding a limitation on how many blacklists your account may appear in. If too many people say they don’t want to be associated with you then that is also a red flag of someone spam-friending random accounts for whatever reason

A key thing to remember is that the only contact non-friended members can have with one another is the sending of their profile to the other’s friend request list. there is no “initial message” or “Hey, it’s me” option or “Hi. I sell excellent quality fake handbags come to my site at xxx.yyy” messages in the “Invite me” message etc. You see their face and their username and if you don’t know them then they can’t contact you in any way after you decline their request. Period.

As you can see, the MBS Social system is designed to link people together but is placing far more emphasis on blocking people from seeing other people than it does on trying to get as many people as possible to sign up and link to as many people as possible. If you have 1000 friends on this site and want to link to them all then you are able to do so. You are even able to see the friends of your friends in the hopes that you may know them and that this is a means to help you discover them… but the friends of friends thing is not thrown in your face to force you to make more connections. Rather, it is made available if you go to your friends page and choose to see the friends of a specific friend.

This is the key thing that users of this site have to understand. This is going to become a social site where you can blog and share screenshots of games and meet up with people to play together, compete against and just engage with, sure… but the purpose of all of this is to give you a more engaging experience. The goal here is NOT to bring as many people as possible to the site and force members to forever add more and more people and forever see people they don’t know appear on their profile pages!

So feel free to make connections and make new friends and enjoy the social site and the features yet to come but be aware that the only contact you can have with another member is only AFTER they decide to LET you make contact. People opening accounts for shops are so totally wasting their time that it is literally laughable!

In a future update we will also let users decide how much or how little info they share with you so just because a person accepts your invite doesn’t automatically mean you get access to their phone numbers, diary and ATM pin codes. Members may decide to hide their friends list from others altogether or choose to show personal info (or not). As an example, look at the “About me” part of the member’s profiles. If they don’t enter anything then the entire section simply doesn’t show up when you view their profile. A future update will allow them to complete personal details but select who gets to see what parts of it.

People who become friends just to challenge each other in a game or receive notifications of when the other joins the game can be given much less access to personal info than actual friends who you may want to share tactical plans with or show pictures of your dog’s latest antics.

Everything is geared towards making the site more engaging, not to be an advertising site that needs as many people as possible to come to the site so they can click on as many ads as possible. It is very important for everyone to know what this system is about and how it works so please be sure to read this document again from time to time as it may be updated as new features or games are introduced to the site over time.